


petrichor.

by romulus_adhara



Series: starlight. [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Hotels, M/M, Magic Realism, Multi, Non-Linear Chronology, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, liminal spaces
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27582484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romulus_adhara/pseuds/romulus_adhara
Summary: Do you know why hotels don’t have the 13th floor?Triskaidekaphobia.Notthe fear of triscuits.Evenif they have sharp edges.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: starlight. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039634
Comments: 42
Kudos: 49
Collections: THE COLLECTION





	1. liminal spaces.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [damnneovelvet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnneovelvet/gifts).



> written for THE DREAM LAB bingo. each chapter fills the cell. i don't want to clog up the tags, so the cell name for the chapter will be written in the notes, as well as any additional information. the entire story is connected by a singular plot, but it's very minor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: liminal spaces.

### liminal spaces.

“Do you know why hotels don’t have the 13th floor?” Mark asks in a hush.

The rubber ball bounces off of the chipped wallpaper and a piece of it tears, falling to the ground like a snowflake on a windless day. It tucks itself away into the frizzled corner of the old carpet and stays there like an eyesore. Or, it would be one, if this entire floor wasn’t one already.

“We’re on it right now,” Johnny answers, not a contradiction and not a question.

“We are,” Mark says. “But it doesn’t exist.”

Triskaidekaphobia. _Not_ the fear of triscuits. _Even_ if they have sharp edges.

“Do _we_?”

The wind howls somewhere, but not here, never here. Nothing really ever happens here, aside from, of course, everything that ever happens.

“You tell me.”

Johnny pushes away from the wall and catches the rubber ball in the air, pressing it into the floor as he leans over Mark’s bended knees to hover over his face.

“We exist if we feel, right?” He whispers.

Mark’s eyes, Mark’s bright, alluring, blithe eyes dance with mirth and lewdness and innocence when they track the movement of Johnny’s lips.

“I feel you,” Mark says, and it sounds like he’s trying to be playful, prissy, akin to fabulous ladies in red lipstick and high heels that roll around in the lobby with chiming laughs and seductive winks. They pull it off, they charm men, human or otherwise, to follow them, but Mark isn’t quite _them_ material. 

Mark isn’t candy perfume and velvety silk. Mark is camomiles tucked in his breast pockets and black lace he hides under the holes of the knockoff abandoned Levi’s he steals from rooms. Mark is asphyxiating madness wrapped in the starry innocence of his cherub smile.

“And I exist,” Johnny answers, “then.”

A hand sneaks over his neck and tugs him closer, hot breath brushing past his earlobe. Mark presses a tender kiss — almost blasphemous in its gentleness — to the mole under the wing of Johnny’s nose. He smells burned caramel and pines. For someone who only exists in the certain beat of the clock, Mark’s presence is overpowering. 

“That isn’t how it works,” Mark murmurs, the flakes of skin on his lips scratching along the tender line under Johnny’s jaw. “But also it is.”

The corridor they’re in is long, too long even, and really overpopulated for being deserted, for being something that doesn’t exist on the map. They’re alone in here now, but every room is occupied, and any minute now, one of the old brown doors can open and reveal another monstrosity of the surreal reality that resides on the non-existent 13th floor of the barely-existing hotel _Limitless._ Johnny kisses Mark again in anticipation of being watched, but somehow, not one of them emerges, giving them the fake privacy. 

“I should go soon,” Mark reminds him between kisses. “I should go.”

Johnny groans in disagreement, but he cannot quite do anything. The hotel doesn’t care for their desires, even if it respects their wishes. Sometimes. As a treat. If they’re obedient.

“I know,” Johnny sighs. “I’ll miss you.”

“You’ll still have me,” Mark says with a little smirk that falls so fast it’s theatrical. “It’s a privilege.”

They both look at the room at the end of the dimly lit corridor, not saying but knowing. Room 1337. Johnny fears it. Sometimes he thinks Mark wants nothing but to enter it, that little treat for the Bluebeard.

“Halloween is soon,” Johnny says, eyes yet glued to the grey shiny paint on the polished wood. It’s the only door on the floor that looks decent, just like all the other doors on all the other floors — those that exist, of course. “It may open.”

“It _will_ open.” Mark’s voice is subdued, reverent, a prayer, a clandestine anathema.

The wind howls closer. The wallpaper pulls itself back together in chipped snowflakes. The rubber ball leaves from under Johnny’s palm and bounces away and away down the corridor and around the corner. Mark’s smell fades.

“I’ll be back before you notice,” Mark reminds, pinching Johnny’s chin and forcing him to meet his eyes.

Johnny can still feel the changes. They happen around them as the night draws to a close, and he only has a few more minutes before the sun touches the checkered rooftops of the hotel’s wings and this floor ceases to exist for the day. They still happen — all the transformations and mutations; but he doesn’t see them, because Mark won’t let him look away. Mark rarely does.

“I love you,” he confesses just as Mark’s hair starts to fade. 

“I know,” Mark whispers. “But you won’t remember it.”

“Will you?”

It’s the dread that sneaks up on him from behind, the apocryphal tale that will be his life before the night descends again, the realization that just for a few hours, _even if it’s just for a few hours_ , he won’t _remember_ , that puts the urgency in his voice.

Mark smiles and kisses his eyelids, like a god blessing his follower to shed blood in his name. 

“Always,” Mark vows.

As he fades from existence and Johnny wakes up in the afternoon in his cramped room on the top floor with a nostalgic heartbreak bitter on his tongue, he’s soothed by a _knowledge_. He doesn’t know where it came from or what it really is, but it settles in the crook of his elbow, clutching at his bicep with small lithe fingers and looking up at him with innocent mirthful eyes, and he treasures it. He keeps it close for the rest of the day as he goes around the hotel and does his nice little tasks, awaiting the evening, when everyone turns in and something beckons him to the floor between the twelfth and fourteenth, the floor that doesn’t really exist unless the moonlight shines on the checkered rooftops.

It’s on this floor that most wondrous, and most horrendous, things happen. 

Would you dare to cross the threshold? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not beta-ed because i'm afraid to send june anything that isn't ets.
> 
> the vibes inspired by the 1975’s entire discography looped during writing 
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	2. room 1316.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Each mess in each room is unique.”
> 
> Dionysus barks out a laugh and jumps up, cracking his neck as he moves for his room to turn in for the day. 
> 
> “Very human of us, don’t you think?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: gods/goddesses.

There are a lot of tasks Johnny is not that fond of. Any job entails unpleasant duties, he reckons, sure, and as long as you’re not an independent worker — and probably even then — there’s not really a lot of room for you to complain about the menial jobs you have to do in order to get paid or, more trivially, not get sacked.

Personally, Johnny hates laundry duty — and no, not because he’s that squeamish, but because the inhabitants of the rooms he’s in charge of are absolutely and disgustingly unhinged. On top of the regular liquids usually found on hotel room sheets, like semen or the remains of the suntan solution, he has to deal with blood, ichor, and more frequently than he would like — ambrosia.

Room 1314 is one of the biggest lofts in the Hotel, and Johnny often thinks the people rooming there did not choose it because of it, but rather the room chose _them_ because of their rather sizable number. Apparently, when you’re created at the dawn of time together, you absolutely _have_ to live together at all times. And when you live together, you fuck together, and you make a mess together, and you accept sacrifices together.

When Johnny enters the room to check if it needs cleaning, he’s met with a growl of three heads and a splat of saliva that plops right to his feet. He flinches at it, _not_ looking forward to cleaning it up, but at least it’s not feces. Surprisingly enough, this thing never shits on the carpet. Johnny doesn’t know where Cerberus relieves itself, or if it even does, but he’s really not keen on finding out.

Johnny bends and pets the heads one by one, making sure to distribute equal amounts of ear scratches and nose bumps. The dog yaps happily at him and then lets him through, waddling away to its personal room. As it cracks the door and sinks inside, Johnny hears what sounds like an agonizing scream of an unfortunate sinner. He shrugs to himself. Cerberus is a thorough eater. As long as Johnny doesn’t have to clean up skeletons, the dog can do whatever it wants there for all he cares.

Aphrodite is the only one in the living room, spread out on the couch in a barely-decent pink gown. She bends her neck over the back of the couch and licks her red lips, looking him over with a smirk.

“You look tasty today, Jonathan,” she comments with a twirl of thick golden hair around her pinky.

“You always say that,” he replies with a polite smile as he goes about cleaning tissues and empty postcards around the journal table.

The goddess sighs and groans as she stretches, extending her hand to brush her fingers in the air near his waist. She won’t touch, he knows, but he still steers clear just in case. Ares is never far away.

“Why the postcards?” He asks. 

“There was a bet,” Aphrodite frowns. “I think.”

Johnny hums and continues making small talk while he regards the damage done to the room over the night. It’s innocent, to an extent, compared to what he knows the Pantheon is capable of. He hears thunderous snoring from one of the bedrooms and can practically guess the amount of wine Zeus has consumed. As if beckoned by the thought, Dionysus emerges from the bathroom in nothing but a towel. 

“Johnny!”

“Good night,” Johnny greets with a polite smile. “You look fresh.”

Dionysus smirks and moves to fall on another couch, stretching his legs over the armrest. The towel rides up, but Johnny pointedly looks away, busying himself with discarding the dried flowers from the countless vases around the room. 

One thing he likes about serving the Pantheon — he won’t have to refill them. Demeter and Persephone will do the job themselves. He’s witnessed them doing it quite a few times, and tries to avoid it whenever he can. As it turns out, rooming with the mother you ran away from centuries ago and then was forced back together with does not bode well for patience. Persephone is a force to be reckoned with, especially under the weight of her mommy issues.

“You should join our festivities,” Dionysus suggests with an arched eyebrow. “You will look just as fresh.”

“I don’t think I can handle your vigor,” Johnny confesses. “Besides, I have work to do.”

“Aish, what a bore.” Dionysus flicks his wrist.

“If I wasn’t, you would have to sleep on dirty sheets,” Johnny reminds him. “Speaking of which, is there any chance your family will wake up before dawn?”

Aphrodite snorts and yawns, stretching her limbs and jumping up. “I highly doubt it.”

Johnny frowns and chastises himself for being so late. He had to move the Pantheon’s room service to last because of the whole trouble with the mermaids, but he should’ve known better. The gods party all night, and it was just his luck he missed his window of opportunity to clean up here.

“I apologize, then,” Johnny utters with a frown. “I will have to change the sheets and towels tomorrow.”

“It’s quite alright,” Aphrodite placates him with a soothing hand on his bicep. Johnny smiles politely and steps away from the touch.

She huffs softly and departs, hips swaying in a gentle dance as she disappears into her and Ares’ room. As the door opens, Johnny catches a glance of the god of war splayed over the bed, messy with red traces of what Johnny hopes is blood and golden shine of ambrosia. It’s a bitch to clean, and he would appreciate it if the gods went easier on it, but then again, he’s the proprietor of his own trouble. He delivers the nectar to the Pantheon himself without fail every night.

“I wonder,” Dionysus says softly, foggy eyes trailing around the wreck of the living room, “if anyone comes close to the mess we make.”

Johnny stops in his doing, straightening up and rubbing his chin in thought.

“I cannot say for sure,” he says honestly. “Each mess in each room is unique.”

Dionysus barks out a laugh and jumps up, cracking his neck as he moves for his room to turn in for the day. 

“Very human of us, don’t you think?” He asks, hand on the door handle draped in grapevines. 

“Perhaps,” Johnny responds respectfully, not really sure if the god even expects an answer.

The smell of grapes fills the room as Dionysus winks at Johnny and sneaks into his bedroom. Apollo’s form is distinguishable on the bed, the golden halo of his hair subdued and rubbed on the pillow like cracked paint. The door closes, hiding the secrets of love and passion.

It’s quiet as Johnny finishes up. He leaves the room clean and calm, dragging three garbage bags with him as he goes. 

Mark is waiting for him already, a smile playing on his lips as he spots Johnny’s rolled-up sleeves and a sheen of sweat over his forehead. Johnny barely gets the time to set the bags against the wall before Mark is jumping on him, heavy and painfully real. He tastes like ambrosia.

“Have you partied with them?” Johnny asks breathlessly into his lips.

“Can you blame me?” Mark muses, dragging his nose along Johnny’s face. “They know how to get it on.”

“They also know how to make a mess,” Johnny grunts half-heartedly, no anger to it.

Mark giggles and jumps down, wasting no time in grabbing Johnny’s hand and tugging him along. Johnny makes a sound of concern, yet remembering his job, but when he looks down on the floor, the bags are already gone. In fact, he finds himself very sure that they are already sorted and discarded into the appropriate bins in the basement.

He looks back up at Mark and sees him grinning like a happy cat.

“Let’s go,” Mark whispers. “It’s _our_ time now.”

With a light heart and longing soul, Johnny complies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	3. room 1314.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It means that she believes I can love you forever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: mythology

It’s a lot. 

Johnny catches his breath and looks around again, the fluffy rainbow dust brush wibble-wobbling in his slightly shaking hands. He knows some residents go all out in their personal decorum — nobody would be occupying their rooms for years to come, anyway, so they don’t exactly need to keep to the standard hotel interior design — but this is… this is something that goes above and beyond.

The standard color scheme of the hotel is the pretentiously velvet red and gold, walls and floors padded and adorned with thick rich wallpaper and carpentry. Here, on the thirteenth floor, the situation is slightly different, of course, what with the peeling scraps on the walls and probably-sentient mold in some corners, but even those nihilistically negligent traits are something special and pertinent to the _Limitless_. The inhabitants of the thirteenth floor love to add their own touches to the rooms, but they still respect the unspoken rules and the cracked mask of the hotel’s appearance.

Not this one, apparently.

It’s not like this is a new development. Johnny has noticed little knickknacks and trinkets appearing here and there with every new visit to room 1314, emerald sprinkles of its mistress engraving themselves into the space like flakes of dust he so diligently swipes away every night. He’s never paid much attention to them, save for commenting and complimenting on Her taste, to which he always received a polite smile and an offer for a gift — that he never accepts, of course, because he doesn’t need Mark’s guidance to know you never accept things from people around here, not unless you want to be tied to them beyond the simple title of the night manager.

Mostly, he never said anything more about them because they didn’t get in the way and it _was_ her room, after all. As long as they paid the rent — an issue he doesn’t allow himself to be curious about, because wanting to know what undead souls pay to the invisible owner in room 1337 to be able to live here goes on par with agreeing to sit down for some ambrosia with the people from room 1316 — he didn’t pay any attention.

Until now, when it’s become impossible to ignore. He goes back on his mental calendar and realizes he’s only neglected this room for a few days, and it’s marvelous how much it transformed over that time.

Everything he sees — all the furniture, walls, curtains, upholstery, even the shiny glass on the window — is _emerald_. It shines and glistens so bright it would be hurting his eyes if he didn’t just come from 1328, where the whole fountain of eternal youth thing shines so brightly his retinas have taken a permanent vacation already. 

“Do you like it?”

She comes out from the bathroom in a gorgeous emerald gown that waterfalls down to the floor in waves upon waves of lace and silk, delicate malachite glass heels peeking out from behind the hem. The neckline is generous at best, exposing the stark diamond and emerald necklace resting on her bosom, and if he looks close enough, he can see the lizard it’s shaped as blink lazily up at its queen. He tries no to stare at her face, aware of the consequences, but it’s hard to look away from deep forest eyes and arching eyebrows that challenge him to say anything. The Mistress flicks her hand and swipes a strand of cobalt hair away from her eyes. 

“It’s magnificent,” Johnny answers honestly. “As are you.”

The Mistress smiles and shakes her head coquettishly, biting down on her lower lip.

“You flatter me,” she says softly. “Good job.”

She flows deeper into the room and bends over the journal table, now also bottle-green glass, and picks up a velvet box. Johnny watches her approach, not walking but flying through the space. He notes dully that if he was wearing glass heels, he’d want to fly instead of walking in them too.

“I have a gift,” she says, in a tone that doesn’t invite any arguing.

But of course, he cannot abide.

“Mistress, I apologize, but…”

“It’s not for you,” she cuts him off, green eyes flashing with a very non-metaphorical fire. They burn like the licking flames in the mountain mines. “It’s for that boy of yours.”

Johnny looks up with a gasp that dies on his lips when he catches the all-knowing smirk on her lips. There he went thinking his relationship with Mark had as much privacy as they could get in this place. But then again, he should not have assumed.

“I knew a woman once,” the Mistress says in a whispering murmur. “She did not accept me, for she loved a… _man_ ,” her lips curl in disdain, “but I rewarded her for her honesty and let her go.”

“That was honorable of you,” Johnny responds quietly, not sure what would be a right thing to say here.

“It was the only honorable thing I ever did, trust me,” she says wistfully. “Her beloved died soon after, yet she did not come back to me. She blamed me, so I had to wait decades for her to come to my world and see him again and realize there was no fault of my own. I asked them both to stay with me.”

She falls quiet, the set of her lips indicating that she’s done talking, and it figures — the echoing emptiness of the rooms is enough of an answer to the query the Mistress posed to the lovers. She looks up from the box and casts a glance around her newly-decorated room, a smile playing on her black lips.

“The doors will be open again soon,” she whispers, but she’s no longer speaking to him, Johnny realizes, oh no, she’s uttering words as if she is… praying. “ _Oni pridut ko mne, ya znayu._ ”

Johnny stands there like a bump on a log, breathless, feeling like he’s imposing even though she’s invited him here herself.

The Mistress blinks the daze away and flashes a smile at him.

“They’ll come to me,” she says with so much faith in her voice it sends shivers down Johnny’s spine. “And so, I shall no longer need this. Your boy will like it.”

She thrusts the box into Johnny’s palms with more force than necessary, either because she’s forgetting the extents of her own strength or believes that the sheer passion with which she does it will ensure those people will appear in her life again.

“Thank you,” Johnny says earnestly. 

The Mistress nods and departs without another word, leaving for the party downstairs like a moving cloud of malachite fog. Perhaps, he’s imagining it, but with her gone, all the emerald decorations and jewels in the room lose their glow, dim down to their basics, fall to slumber as they wait for the Mistress of the Malachite Mountain to come back to her temporary abode.

Johnny doesn’t open the box — it is not his gift, after all — but sets it down with a soft thump before getting to work. It’s harder to clean this new interior, but he always liked a little challenge. 

Mark joins him twenty minutes later, when Johnny’s finishing up, putting the last dusting touches to a collection of nephrite figurines on the mantelpiece. The boy almost startles Johnny into dropping one of them, but he catches himself in time. Mark giggles and wraps his arms around Johnny’s waist, pressing their bodies flush.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Johnny notes, discarding his latex gloves and rubbing circles into Mark’s skin.

“I ran into The Mistress,” Mark shares in a purr. “She said you had a gift for me.”

“Ah, yes.”

Green velvet somehow fits in Mark’s pale little hands. His slender fingers run above the lid before he pops it open and looks with eyes awed at a wide malachite button resting on top of the cushion.

“That is… strange,” Johnny comments, for the lack of a better word.

“It’s very symbolic, actually,” Mark whispers with tears in his eyes. 

Alarms start going off in Johnny’s mind before Mark looks up and reveals a trembling smile.

“It means that she believes I can love you forever,” Mark shares shakingly. 

Johnny stills. He isn’t quite as knowledgeable about these things as Mark is, and he doesn’t hold the same reverence for the gifts bestowed by the mythological creatures lurking in these halls — but Mark looks happier than he’s been in a while, and that is more than enough for Johnny to get on board with anything.

“Did you need her confirmation for that?” Johnny whispers, brushing his knuckles over Mark’s cheek. The boy chases his touch and Johnny hugs his face with his palm before pressing a chaste kiss to his cold lips. 

“No, but the blessing of this woman means a lot,” Mark says after the kiss. 

He pulls away and gives Johnny one of his infamous _looks_ , glistening soft baby eyes and all, before sneaking another kiss and skipping to the door.

“I’ll see you later,” he sing-songs, leaving the room before Johnny can even process what happened.

He shakes his head and rubs his lips before returning to work in the quiteitude of the surrounding beauty. It’s strange.

But in this Hotel, not a lot of things can be considered ordinary. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _Oni pridut ko mne, ya znayu._ " - "They'll come to me, I know it."
> 
> yo any slavics here who grew up on the obscure folklore books they found in their grandma's boarded up attic? if no, google The Malachite Maid, she goes under a lot of names. I made her gay because I can
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	4. room 1321.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny often dreams of the life that was _before_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: dreams

Johnny often dreams of the life that was _before._

Or, at least, that’s what he thinks the dreams are, because there is never certainty in the place like this; not when he lies his head on the pillows of the Hotel that shouldn’t even stand here on this hill, surrounded by pine forest and misty mountains that never seem to catch any snow.

It’s never anything in particular. There are no scenes or memories he can’t quite recall when he wakes up. No distinct faces or smells or places. Nothing that could be recognized in the light of day.

There are, however, glimpses and traces of myriads of inconsistent things — stuffy ballrooms, foggy streets, fresh forests, rainy mornings, haunting nights, loving smiles, gasping breaths, soft voices, stolen kisses, shining eyes, muggy grounds, white flowers. A nauseating array, a flashy supercut of things that used to make up his life — in another world, in _before_ , in the land that he never really thinks about anymore; in the plane of existence that isn’t quite accessible to him these days.

They linger often after he wakes up, clinging to him like misty dew to grass before the sun comes up fully, and even the longest showers can’t shed them. Johnny carries them around with himself, these miscarriages that are not fully dreams but not vivid enough to be memories. They are _something_ , that’s for sure, but what exactly they are, or where they came from, he cannot say.

Because when he tries to look closely, inspect them like a bug pinned to crusty paper, they disappear. Just like that — unshakable when he doesn't pay attention to them but fragile enough to disintegrate if only he looks directly at them. It’s strange, and it bothers him sometimes, because it’s not that easy — to carry around the memories of days he isn’t sure were his; lug them around like burdensome luggage, not even knowing if you’re carrying it for yourself or just dragging it for someone else as a thankless favor.

He talks to Mark about these dreams once, when all the residents of the floor are downstairs at a masquerade and they’re left alone in a dusty old corridor that doesn’t exist if you try to look for it.

“It _feels_ like I’m remembering,” he confesses quietly into Mark’s hair.

The boy is curled up at his side on the floor, playing with his rubber ball and bouncing it up and down, up and down, up and down, and then catching it with long pale fingers and squeezing it so tight his wrist shakes with strain.

“But when I think about it,” Johnny continues, watching the straight pattern of the ball’s flight and descent, “I don’t _remember_ it. You know?”

Mark hums and stops the ball, tucking it between their legs to turn his face and press his cold lips to Johnny’s neck, a tentative but assured graze against his jugular vein. Johnny lets his eyes drift shut as Mark continues his trek toward his cheek, and then — the corner of his lips; not fully a kiss but more than just a touch.

“Have you ever considered you’re not having _your_ dreams?” He whispers into Johnny’s mouth, yet he poses the question as if he doesn’t want it to be answered; like it’s just an excuse for his tongue to sneak out and wet Johnny’s own lips.

He’s never been able to resist Mark, really, so he casts the conversation aside to cup Mark’s neck and draw him into a full kiss. Mark goes willingly, melting into Johnny like patty, and it’s between a blink and another peck on the lips that he climbs Johnny’s lap to grind their hips together.

As Johnny realizes it’s going to be one of _those_ nights, the thoughts and musing about his dreams fade away much like those memories do when he tries to focus on them. He pushes against the wall to stand up and take Mark with him, making his way blindly into the room 1321 — Mark’s own residence, the one he barely spends time at (because it’s always too lonely there anyway, and ever since Johnny came along, there’s no reason for him anymore to mope around his window, looking out into the night and awaiting his prince in shining armor to arrive — his prince is now here, with him) — and carrying Mark into the darkness of the small room that tastes like caramel and pines.

Only later, when Mark is sound asleep by his side, his naked shoulder — a blasphemic curve of white against the ink of the night — Johnny thinks about what he said. He plays with the sheet covering Mark’s thin waist, brushing his fingertips along his cold soft skin, and wonders. About a lot of things, and about nothing in particular.

During the day, Johnny doesn’t remember that this floor exists. He doesn’t remember Mark. He doesn’t remember his life here, nothing of it — not the pains and certainly not the joys.

During the nights, he doesn’t remember what happens to him in the day or what _ever_ happened to him in the previous days of his life. Perhaps, that is the answer? Perhaps, what he thinks are dreams are just glimpses of things that he goes through when the sun shines brightly onto the checkered rooftops of the _Hotel_?

Or perhaps, Johnny wonders fearfully, Mark is right — Johnny is having someone else’s dreams. 

Yet if that is true, then whose?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	5. room 1323.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten, much in style to the overall essence of the Hotel, never seems to be quite the same person every night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: identity

Ten, much in style to the overall essence of the Hotel, never seems to be quite the same person every night. 

Johnny often wonders if it has something to do with whatever happens to the thirteenth floor during the day, but that wonder, perhaps, gets its roots from the fact that Johnny has absolutely no idea what transpires here when the moon is hidden away; and whenever he asks anyone about it, they clam up and look at him like he has gone mad. He reckons, that would be how people from other floors would look at him were he to mention that he works on the thirteenth floor — because such a thing, of course, does not exist.

Ten himself insists that he never changes, that he has been the same for years now, and that all of them are just imagining things that are simply not there. He flicks his wrist at them and departs toward the bar, and at first, it used to fool Johnny. He would leave it at that, trusting Ten to know himself and believing that if the man says he hasn’t changed, it is so — he just seemed to develop a new habit or suddenly lose an old one. His voice dips or rises high depending on the weather, and his humor turns from childishly ridiculous to scaringly mature, and sometimes he turns up dressed like a teenage punk with his hair bleached to the roots and black nail polish cracking on his fingers — but that is just how some people are.

With time, however, Johnny has learned to distinguish something that never changed in Ten, and that was the deep, gripping, never-ceasing _fear_ buried in his dark eyes. Fear of what — Johnny never knows for certain. 

It’s always there, in the upturn of Ten’s cat-like devilish stare, but its intensity changes from night to night. That fear seems to control everything that he does and says, every little fluctuation of his identity. Johnny doesn’t ask — either because he’s afraid of the truth or because he knows Ten wouldn’t respond anyway; either out of reluctance or his own unknowing.

Mark doesn’t know a lot about him, either. All he could tell Johnny was that Ten had checked into the room 1323 roughly at the same time everybody else did, and he settled his payment directly to the owner. Ten likes partying and drinking, dirty jokes and loud laughter, and Ten likes watching the man from room 1328 twirl and flow through the dancing crowd every night. He never approaches, either out of the fear of being rejected — which is strange when it comes to Ten, because, as Johnny has noticed, if Ten has his mind set on something, more often than not, he’s going to flirt with it — or, perhaps, out of his own reasons that he would never divulge to Johnny.

Taeyong, the man in question, is aware of the attention yet never yields to it.

Johnny often comes down to the ballroom when he’s done with his tasks and can dedicate time to unlikely friendships he’s stricken with the inhabitants of the thirteenth floor. He would say Taeyong is one of those people he likes and talks to, but there is always something about the man that keeps everybody at a distance. An invisible shield, painted with electric blue of heartbreak, that never quite allows anybody to get through.

But one thing remains clear — someone _has_ been on the other side of that shield once. There is a story there, a painful and long tale, the one to which Johnny is not privy to. He does, however, spend a lot of time in the rooms, and he notices things.

Like Ten’s ever-changing personality and the fact that it, every time, somehow, is aimed at Taeyong. Every new joke, he tells loudly and only when Taeyong is nearby to hear. Every prank, he pulls in a way that doesn’t hurt Taeyong but is visible to him. When he suddenly turns up one day announcing he writes poems now, he waits until Taeyong is looking in their direction before reciting. Taeyong is always there, but never _here_.

Johnny snaps one day and asks Ten after all.

“Who are you?” He murmurs as they sit together at the empty bar, watching the crowded dance floor shake and tumble under the drunk patrons waltzing to Chopin. “Really?”

Ten blinks at him strangely, not taken aback by the question but by the fact Johnny is posing it. He smiles sadly then and looks down on his glass, swirling the whiskey in it with his pinky. There’s a skull ring on it.

“I am a product of my choices,” Ten answers with a surprised breathlessness to his voice, as if he didn’t expect himself to speak. “ _Bad_ choices, mostly.”

Johnny trails his new suit — sparkly black two-piece with a blue forget-me-not tucked into the breast pocket — and sighs wistfully. He could’ve guessed that himself, but at the same time, Ten doesn’t seem like someone to spill his entire life story to a night manager, however friendly they are.

“Are you human?” Johnny asks. 

In _Limitless_ , it’s almost always impossible to tell. 

“I used to be,” Ten murmurs. Frowns. “I think. I was always… different.”

Mark approaches them before Johnny can prod further, gliding through the air like a graceful angel. He lands right into Johnny’s arms, leaning against his shoulder in a drunken slump, slurring something against his ear. He smells like golden dust.

“What’s that?” Johnny whispers.

“Echoes,” Mark slurs. “We’re nothing but echoes, aren’t we?”

Johnny leans back and frowns at him, but Mark isn’t looking his way. His eyes are glued to Ten, and as Johnny traces it, he realizes that they are locked in a sort of an internal dialogue. He sits there uncomfortably, dying to know what it is that they are conversing about — if they even are — but also willing to give them privacy. 

“You’re right,” Ten speaks up finally with a bitter smirk. “We _are_ just echoes of what we were, and our lives are nothing but a big jigsaw puzzle, comprised of thousands small things.”

He departs then, sliding into the dancing crowd, and Johnny sees Taeyong’s eyes follow him across the room. The man himself stays glued to his place, a glass of martini in his hand. He’s propped against the golden wall and watching Ten with something that, perhaps, is sadness — but it is impossible to say from such a distance.

“What was that?” Johnny asks, turning to Mark and securing his hands around the man’s waist.

Mark shrugs and picks at the collar of Johnny’s work shirt. 

“This hotel is a crosspath for some,” Mark says quietly. “Have you ever noticed the colors of their doors?”

Just as he always does, Mark gives him a kiss and disappears in the crowd that gets thinner with each passing second. The clock is ticking away to dawn and the party is wrapping up. Johnny watches them slowly disengage from each other and make their way upstairs. Soon enough, it is only him and Ten left, yet Ten doesn’t move. He’s standing by the window, looking out into the night, and when Johnny watches his profile, he sees the same constant fear reflecting in Ten’s dark eyes.

Johnny leaves him be, instead making his way to his own room to prepare for slumber and forgettance. He passes room 1323 on his way, Ten’s abode, and stops before it for a moment, regarding the black door. Mark got to his head, he admits eventually, because there’s nothing unusual about it — aside, of course, from the fact that it _is_ extremely unusual; but that’s nothing new. Johnny has seen it many times. Just a black door with peeling paint and a crack at the top of it, with an equally black and cracked handle.

He shakes his head and leaves, but on his way out, he does throw a glance at Taeyong’s room, the 1328 one, which stands opposite of 1323 and a little to the side. Yet again, nothing new, and nothing that out of the ordinary in a place where everything is bizarre.

Johnny departs then to his own bedrooms, leaving behind the blue door of room 1328.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	6. room 1318.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is, supposedly, a witch living in one of the rooms. Johnny doesn’t meet him for weeks after starting at the Hotel, but whom he meets, and who, surprisingly, has his own room, is the said witch’s familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: familiars

There is, supposedly, a witch living in one of the rooms. Johnny doesn’t meet him for weeks after starting at the Hotel, but whom he meets, and who, surprisingly, has his own room, is the said witch’s familiar.

At first, he assumes the owner is just out when he enters the room 1318 and finds a rather fluffy black cat lounging on the piano, not unlike the one he saw in room 1315 a couple of weeks ago, when — and he still blushes a little when he thinks about it — he first met _Mark_.

The man has been rather elusive since then, with Johnny only meeting him two times, but each accidental run-in with the half-transparent apparition imprints itself on Johnny’s memory not as a happening of a new instance but a remembrance of sorts. He cannot yet shake the feeling of having known Mark since before he’s come to _Limitless_ , but he doesn’t have the courage to bring it up yet, not when every time Mark’s eyes land on him, Johnny feels consumed by electricity and soft embrace at the same time.

He thinks about him when he notes the long-awaited absence of the _Not disturb_ sign on the room 1318’s door and enters it to do a check-up and clean what needs cleaning.

Which, upon closer inspection, turns out to be nothing. The rooms are spotless and deserted save for the animal that stares at him from its place on the piano. Johnny clears his throat and comes closer, feeling out of place yet exactly where he needs to be, and nods to the cat. It stays unblinking for a few moments, piercing green eyes gazing deep into Johnny’s soul, before it reluctantly sighs and blinks, indicating its acceptance of Johnny’s presence.

It makes him feel strange — approved, perhaps, or just _tolerated_. He stands in his place, kneading his palms.

“Hi,” he feels compelled to say. “Is your owner around?”

A couple weeks ago, he would feel silly talking to _a cat_ , but now, having spent countless hours familiarizing himself with the peculiar crowd that inhabits this floor, it feels only fitting to treat an animal like he would any other person.

A second later, his hunch proves correct, as the cat releases another tired sigh and jumps off the piano before turning around itself a few times. With each spiraling move, it grows in size and transforms, mesmerizingly and quickly, until there is a tall man standing gracefully before Johnny. There’s a thin black robe hugging his frame and long white hair falling on green eyes.

“He’s in another room,” the man informs him in a deep velvet voice that resembles the upholstery of the ballroom. “This is _my_ apartment.”

“Oh.” Johnny gulps and nods, trying not to give away his not-surprise at having the cat be _a person_. “Do you need anything, then?”

“Just your name,” the cat smirks.

Johnny opens his mouth but doesn’t speak, squinting in suspicion.

“Is this one of those situations where I tell you my name and then somehow owe you my first-born?”

A beat of terrified silence passes before the man’s surprised face turns gleeful and he explodes with laughter, clapping his hands joyfully. 

“You’re funny, I like it,” he decrees.

The glamour of a haughty creature suddenly falls from him like waves of a robe, and he strolls across the room toward a tall wooden table covered in neat rows of vials and plant pots. There’s a decanter with drinks sitting among them, and he pours two glasses of whiskey.

“I don’t drink,” Johnny tries. “Not on the job.”

The man grants him an unimpressed gaze. “They’re both for me.”

“Ah.” Johnny clears his throat. “So, okay, I’m Johnny, the new night manager.”

“You’ve been here for a month and a half, of course I know who you are,” the man says with a snort. “And _I’m_ Hendery.”

The name tugs at Johnny’s memory, but the harder he tries to claw at it, the more it eludes him. A lot of things about the Hotel do and will do, but Johnny is only on the verge of finding that out. For now, he simply grants Hendery with a smile.

“I’m a familiar,” Hendery supplies, and then — sighs like he’s been dreadfully bored for centuries now. “My witch is… occupied. Has been for quite some time now, if I’m being frank.”

“Oh?” Johnny wets his lip. He doesn’t really know if his job is like one of a bartender’s; as in, is he supposed to be the customer’s therapist?

“Yeah, it’s a pity,” Hendery pouts. “He’s allowed to leave, you know. I’d like to say I don’t judge him for using it, but I kinda do.”

Johnny frowns and shakes his head, awkwardly fumbling with the keycard in his fingers as he watches Hendery raise his whiskey glass to his lips.

“Everybody is allowed to leave,” he says quietly. “It’s a hotel, not a prison.”

Hendery’s hand stops in the air, and it’s suddenly so quiet Johnny thinks he can hear the water splashing in the mermaid’s room. It’s a stretch of agonizing silence as Hendery lowers the glass and stares him down again, his eyes flashing with anger and humor and something indecipherable.

“Hm.” He chuckles. “You _are_ funny.”

He turns on his heels rapidly, not letting Johnny answer before he’s talking again, gesturing wildly around the room.

“You see, it’s easy for you to say — although, I don’t think it should be, but that’s a topic for another day,” he rants as he pours himself more whiskey so aggressively it splashes on the decounter. He swipes his wrist at it angrily, and the spot vanishes. “But the thing is, why do you think we’re so fucking tied up to our rooms? Why do you think Ten changes every day? Why do you think he can’t look Taeyong in the eye? Why do you think there seem to _always_ have to be distance before them? Why do you think Mark is practically a fucking ghost? Why do you think Yuta cries when the dawn comes? Why do you think the Pantheon is hanging out in one room of this goddamn hotel? Why do you think Yukhei hates singing? Why do you think Jungwoo never smiles? Why do you think I have my own room when I’m supposed to never part from my witch’s side? Why do you think Xiaojun hasn’t spoken a word since he got here?”

He turns around in a flurry, his robe swirling around him like a dark mist of regret and fear, and his eyes burning like the ember fires of the Mistress in room 1314.

“We’re trapped here with our own mistakes,” Hendery whispers angrily, his lips shaking. He’s clutching the glass so hard it cracks. Johnny feels fear spreading through his heart.

And just like that — Hendery transforms again, the smile appearing on his face quickly like a bullet shot from an old revolver, with a crook that makes it feel _evil._

“My room doesn’t require cleaning,” he says slowly, almost purring. “You can skip it when you’re making the rounds.”

It’s as clear of a dismissal as he’s going to get, so Johnny nods shakily and departs, but not before Hendery calls out to him when he’s almost out the door.

“Don’t say that to anyone again,” he advises, his tongue jumping out to wet his white lips. “I’m quick to anger, but compared to what _they_ will do if _you_ point it out, it’s… child’s play.”

Confusion rises in Johnny’s mind, but before he can prod further, Hendery flicks his wrist, and the door closes so quickly Johnny barely has time to jump away before it hits him in the face.

Well, that was lovely.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” comes from his right.

He jerks his head to see Mark leaning against the wall, a small rubber ball bouncing up and down in his palm. He looks somehow healthier today, more… vivid.

“You heard?” Johnny asks instead of a greeting.

“The door was cracked,” Mark explains, but the ambiguity of his eyes tell Johnny it’s not the whole story. “Sorry.”

“It’s— It’s fine,” Johnny assures him. “But like… I don’t— I didn’t really—”

Mark pushes away from the wall and throws the ball to Johnny, who catches it on instinct and feels an icy touch of the rubber surface on his skin. 

“You’ll see it,” Mark says quietly, _sadly_. “With time, you will.”

He leaves as invisibly as he appeared, and Johnny watches him sink into his own room without sparing a second glance, and it, somehow, hurts. The ache he feels is inexplicable, but when Johnny looks down on the ball and turns it around in his fingers, he feels — weirdly — comforted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	7. room 1335.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny Suh doesn’t remember when or how or even why he came to this hotel. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: contracts

Johnny Suh doesn’t remember when or how or even why he came to this hotel. 

One day, he just walked up to the counter and received the key to his room on the top floor. The room in question, a rather bleak nondescript pastel pink confinement, seemed to have been waiting for him. His bed, sturdy just the way Johnny liked it, was surrounded by two uninspiring wooden tables with camomiles and magazines scattered all over it. A small rombic window that to this day is abhorred by the same peach pink curtains, showed him the view he would be enjoying for months to come. A spacy, vast, impossibly green territory laid down before him like a miniature dollhouse decorum shone with white marble statues and rusty-orange passageways into other wings.

None of those wings were important, nor are they such now. The one that matters, the one that still stands under his feet and bends under his command, is the most peculiar and most lovely wing, the one he tenderly calls his and forebodes to be his laying ground. 

He doesn’t quite remember how it came to be. Johnny never responded to a job listing, never traveled far away as he was running from the ghosts of his past right into the arms of the ghosts of his future, he never quite agreed to working as the night manager at _Hotel Limitless._

And yet, it happened. Laid down before him, black ink on cream paper, is a contract he had signed all that time ago, before he really got to know what he was getting into. Before he met Mark, before he stumbled onto Ten and Taeyong and Yuta and all the others, before he realized quite epiphanically that this was the only place in the whole entire world he belonged in. 

Johnny brushes his fingers over it now, the words that outline his fate, the words that he never quite controlled like they controlled him, the words stomping into his temples now like the hooves of the red horse from room 1320. The light falls on it from the rombic window as he bends over the table, head in hands as his eyes trail the letters he doesn’t recall reading before he left a cursive indulgence of his signature at the bottom.

Mark’s hand lands on his shoulder, and he almost doesn’t shudder. He looks up at the sky, yet baring the baby grey of the stormy dusk. Mark shouldn’t be here yet. Johnny shouldn’t remember him yet.

But, as he noticed recently, things haven’t been working like they used to lately. Things bend backwards, time runs amok, doors open to rooms that weren't there before. Mark exists outside of the night and the thirteenth floor.

“Johnny?” Mark beckons, but Johnny stares stubbornly in front of him, at the blinding twilight sky. “Look at me.”

“I’m afraid you’d disappear if I did,” Johnny whispers.

Temptation does sink its claws into his resolve, and he untangles his right hand from his hair and puts it on top of Mark’s, surprisingly solid yet mundanely cold on his shoulder. Mark turns his palm over and intertwines their fingers.

“What does not exist,” Mark murmurs breathlessly, playful like a child, “cannot disappear.”

Johnny’s eyes fall close. Lips touch his cheek and then — his own lips, pressing into him like an augury of his ascension. Or descent. The hotel is yet to decide, he reckons. He ought to know for sure soon.

Mark’s enervating presence settles over Johnny’s bones like nuclear fallout, dusty red flakes covering each limb and muscle like a jigsaw puzzle. Perfection of love.

“What am I?” Johnny asks when Mark pushes away.

Gentle fingers dance over his eyelids as a chuckle falls from his beloved tongue. The pressure on his shoulder slowly dissipates as Mark’s voice fades away into the distance. It’s quite alright, though. The night is soon, and Johnny will see him again in just a few hours.

“You know it already,” Mark whispers from behind him. “You know why the hotels don’t have the 13th floor.”

The door to his room slams open, and Johnny whips around to look out into the dark corridor. Nothing there, not a single movement of the air, not even a brush of existence here on his human floor.

_You know it already, my love_.

Johnny’s hand constricts over his contract involuntarily as his gaze falls on the shiny silver numbers on the old brown door, yet agape. A modicum of politeness would be appreciated, but Johnny cannot find it in himself to be mad at Mark. Never at Mark, never for something so meaningless as not shutting the door on his way out. 

He stands up and walks around his bed to close the door, but not before he looks at the room number, seeing it for what seems like the first time. Then, he huffs out a breath, and closes it firmly, to remain sealed until the night comes, and until he can leave it and start his job for the night.

Johnny Suh sits down again to read over his contract, and his room remains solidly on the floor that doesn’t quite exist, with shiny silver _1335_ standing out like the beacon for all things nocturnal and nefarious that crawl and hide in the cracks of the thirteenth floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	8. room 1320.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the ruins of a memory that was never supposed to be created.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: ruins.

The first time Johnny came into the room 1320, he thought he had mistakenly walked out into a garden. Before, of course, he remembered that he might as well have. After a few weeks at the Hotel, not a lot can yet surprise him, but when the nightly itinerary that showed up at his room tonight indicated that he needed to go inside the room he thought to be unoccupied, he felt a wonder alikes to which he hasn’t experienced in quite some time.

The note didn’t say what he needed to do in the room — just that he needs to show up and verify that it was ready. For what, or how he can determine that — it didn’t say.

Johnny stands by the door, hand still on the door handle, and gazes upon a hauntingly beautiful yet tragically devastated garden. Logistically, it’s not supposed to fit in here, but he can clearly see that the garden extends way beyond what would otherwise be the edge of the Hotel. He walks in and lets the door flow closed behind him. When he turns to check on it, there’s nothing there anymore, only more gardens. For some reason, he isn’t afraid. He knows it will let him out when he’s done here.

Carefully, Johnny steps further. The entirety of the ground is covered in dried or dying roses, the vast carpet of sharp thorns and a multitude of colors — pink, red, purple, orange, ash, white, black, indigo, all possible shades and hues, natural and magical alike. He tries to find a clear patch to step on, but it proves to be impossible, so he resorts to walking on the flowers. Some of them crinkle under his shoes, dried leaves shattering into hundreds small pieces, and some — squelch, the decaying diseased petals disintegrating into a shapeless mass. 

It smells foul here, but he thinks he can catch a whiff of freshness the longer he walks. It’s hard to see something beyond the trees scattered around, and they, too, just like roses, are either dead or dying; but those are not just skeletons of nature, weirdly enough — all the leaves and blooming flowers are still attached to branches, but they’re dried, dead, forlorn.

“Hello?” Johnny tries.

The only sound that meets him is the echo of his own subdued voice bouncing off of the stale air and disappearing into the void. Johnny looks up to see another grotesque beauty of this room — a boundless sky with stars scattered all over it, constellation and twinkling lights shining with a moribund glow. He squints at the sky, sensing that something is wrong. He’s been gazing up at the stars quite frequently lately, but this one seems wrong — as if they were painted on this space from memory, a memory that has been becoming more and more faulty the further the artist moved across the ink blanket.

He keeps walking, and the time stills and bates its breath just as he does when he finally walks into a clearing with a glorious marble fountain towering over its kingdom of death. Johnny wonders if this was what he smelled, but as he comes closer, he realizes that the fountain, much like everything here, is dead. He props his hands on the edge and looks inside, only to jerk away and cover his nose.

The floor of the fountain is filled with a swamp, black and revolting sludge gurgling and moving like a living entity. Johnny looks at it again with disgust, and it seems, somehow, to stare back at him in a challenge he does not understand the rules of. He sits down carefully on the edge with his back turned to it, even if the hair on the back of his neck stands out in warning. 

It’s quiet. That’s what the strangest of it all. Out there, beyond the Hotel, when you walk into a night garden, you expect a horde of sounds. Birds, crickets, rustling of leaves, distant rush of water, night owls, little animals moving around in the bushes — yet here, it’s dead silent.

Just as he thinks about it, an echoing stomping starts up in the distance. Johnny looks around, trying to determine the source of the sound, but it seems to be coming from everywhere at the same time. He grips the edge of the fountain, his pulse spiking as he awaits for whatever it is to show itself. It doesn’t happen, not right away.

First, two white lights appear around fifty feet away from Johnny. He strains his eyes, adjusting them to the light after the dimness of the twilight. After a while, he can distinguish two figures that manifest out of the lights. He wants to call out for them, but something stops him — the memory of his itinerary. It didn’t say to get involved. It only said to watch.

So that, he does. The light subsides altogether, and he can now clearly see two men stand facing each other, their emotions indistinguishable but their beauty unmistakable. For a moment, Johnny thinks it’s just _one_ man standing in front of the mirror, their similarities so staggering, but then he notes different clothes. One of the men is adorned in flowing silver robes, almost transparent to a point the shape of his elegant body is clearly visible. His companion is dressed in a more familiar, modern manner, with his simple black pants and a leather jacket with a pattern Johnny can’t see from here.

They talk about something, their conversation never reaching Johnny over the thumping of—

_Hooves_. 

He gets it, finally, as the sound moves closer, and after what seems like an eternity, the thing emitting it comes into sight — a magnificent red horse, its eyes burning with black fire and its body trembling in a vertiginous convulsion. The two men don’t pay it any attention, even as it rushes past Johnny and the fountain and toward them, charging at full speed with a thunderous neighing. 

Johnny wants to call out and warn them, but something holds him back — a grip on his throat that comes from the air itself, cutting his voice out before it can even try to appear.

The horse rushes past— no, _through_ the men, and they dissipate back into the light, vaporizing into a white fog and ascending toward the skies. Then, it’s quiet again.

Johnny sits frozen to the ground for a long time, trying to process what happened, and if he can leave now, if he’s seen what he needed to see — even if he does not understand the purpose of it all. He stays there for so long, not knowing what to do, that something peculiar happens.

The stomping appears again. Just like before, it comes from everywhere, and just like before, the two men materialize again out of the white light. The scene repeats itself to the last detail, and when it’s done again, Johnny knows it’s time to go.

He stands up and walks back to where he came from. His path crosses the place the men were standing at, and when he approaches it, he notices something on the ground. He kneels down and brushes away a few dead roses to see a necklace glinting in the filth. Johnny picks it up and wipes the dirt away from a little sword pendant. Just as he leans in to look at it closer, it dissolves in his arms and flows to the earth in silver drops, sinking into the dirt and disappearing from sight.

Just then, the door comes back. Johnny looks over it, yet nothing is amiss — it is just a simple green door, with a few old splinters here and there. Nothing unusual.

The stomping rings out again. Johnny’s heart jumps in his throat as he sees the light start appearing in the air right in front of him, but, before he can hang back and finally see the men closer — the door opens in a swift motion, and someone grabs him by the forearm, snatching him outside into the corridor and throwing the door shut.

Johnny turns to see—

“Persephone?” He breathes out, shocked to see the goddess outside her room so early in the evening.

“Who told you to go there?” She asks without a greeting, eyes flashing with something Johnny hopes isn’t anger, her long silver hair in disarray.

“The owner,” Johnny says with a frown. “But it’s strange, nobody’s there— Well, except for t—”

“Don’t,” Persephone screams out, and in a dizzying split of a moment, it looks like her face changes into someone completely different — a man Johnny’s never seen around before.

She clears her throat and fixes her silk black robes. Johnny catches a glimpse of a dagger stashed behind a garment and averts his eyes.

“This is a garden,” she says, calmer now, “that used to belong to a— friend of mine, you would say. I was asked to keep it preserved.”

“Well,” Johnny starts apprehensively, “it doesn’t look that good.”

“It’s supposed to be like that,” Persephone hisses. “It… needs to stay like that.”

Unable and not _allowed_ to argue, Johnny nods. With a quick motion, he locks the door again and grants Persephone with a polite smile.

“If you don’t mind me asking, though,” he still decides to try.

“They’re not stuck,” Persephone answers, anticipating his question with a small smile. “They’re more free than any of us here.”

“Oh.” Johnny hums. “I see.”

“You don’t, not really, but that is alright.” Persephone looks at the door and places her hand gently upon it, caressing the wood almost lovingly. Johnny sees a neat silver ring with pomegranate jewels melted into it on her ring finger. “These are the ruins of a memory that was never supposed to be created.”

With that, she departs, holding her robes up carefully to avoid stepping on them. She’s barefoot, Johnny notes, and perhaps, he imagines it — but he thinks he can see scars on the soles of her feet. Scars from old rose thorns.

Without a single glance back, Persephone rejoins her family in the room 1316, and Johnny, after a moment of contemplation, throws all the thoughts about the garden out of his mind and continues with his duty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	9. room 1317.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In room 1317, Johnny has only one task, unchanged throughout his service at the Hotel. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: mirrors.

In room 1317, Johnny has only one task, unchanged throughout his service at the Hotel. 

It is one of the smallest lodgings in _Limitless_ , a single barren room with golden black wallpaper. Four walls, no windows, and only one thing in the entire room. 

A mirror. It hangs on the right side of the room, a floor-to-ceiling monstrosity of a creation clad in a golden frame. Aside from its size and the place of its existence — the Hotel — there is nothing particularly strange about it; if maybe, perhaps, one simple thing.

It doesn’t reflect — not what it’s supposed to. It creeped Johnny out at first when he came in to perform his only assignment here, clean the mirror, and came up to it only to discover he couldn’t see himself in it. The rest of the room is there, supposedly, a perfect reflection of every peel and crack in the ceiling, but his form is, very mundanely, not in it. He got used to it after a while, choosing to focus on another peculiar detail of this bizarre room in the hotel of impossible things.

Despite the room lacking occupants, every time he comes in to clean the mirror — every third day — there is _something_ to clean on the glass. Smudges or dust, dirt that seems to be scorched into the surface, even — and he hopes that his eyes deceive him — crusted blood. At first glance, it looks as if the marks are made from the inside, yet when Johnny puts the cloth in his shaky hand to the stains, they come off easily and quickly.

He doesn’t know what causes the mess to appear. Nobody ever comes in here, not even Mark and his merry band — Johnny asked them — and the only key that exists in possession is Johnny’s. There’s supposed to be another one, like usual, the one checked out to whoever moves in, but no matter how long Johnny searched, he couldn’t find it. The records, or what passes for them on the thirteenth floor, state that the room is occupied. There is no name.

And yet, without change, there is always something to clean. 

Sometimes, when Johnny is particularly tired after a long round of chores and room 1317 ends up the last on his route, his gaze is unfocused enough to catch glimpses of things inside the mirror. He discarded suspicions about tricks of lights and whatnot pretty quickly, as nothing in _Limitless_ was _ever_ a trick of the light, and after a while, he started _looking._

At first, he appeared to Johnny briefly, a fleeting mist in the corner of Johnny’s eye. Johnny wouldn’t prod, simply continuing with his task, waiting for whoever is there to trust him enough to show themselves fully. After a while, the mist became thick fog that moved slower. Then, he could distinguish a shape. Then, it stopped hiding.

It has been quite some time now since Johnny came into the Hotel, but he hasn’t heard his voice yet. Their level of trust as of now is something that could be referred to as a watching agreement. Johnny just _watches_ , doesn’t stare, and _he_ allows it. He’s curious too, Johnny can tell, but he’s yet to breach the silence and introduce himself.

Usually, he just sits in the corner, knees bent under his chin where he’s curled up in a corner. His hair is pastel pink, and Johnny thinks he might have dimples if he smiles. His eyes are kind but so painfully sad it takes up hours of Johnny’s time to try and figure out what happened to him — and how he can help. He’s dressed in street clothes that yet carry elegance about them, as if his dishevelment is deliberate, calculated. There is a single silver pendant hanging on his neck, but the end of it is hidden by his shirt. He nods to Johnny when he arrives, but otherwise doesn’t interact. Sometimes, he cries.

When Johnny is done, he nods to the man trapped in the mirror and turns around, throwing a habitual glance in the corner of the actual room and finding it empty. It tugs at his stomach, but he, nevertheless, leaves.

“His name is Jaehyun,” Mark tells him once, when they’re wrapped in the predawn quietude of the Hotel and Johnny has just come back from room 1317.

They’re in the corridor next to Mark’s room, sitting on the frayed carpet and throwing the rubber ball around. Johnny squints.

“How do you know?” He asks quietly.

Mark shrugs. “I always know,” he whispers. “I just… know.”

Johnny doesn’t push further. It rarely helps with Mark. He either stays silent or leaves Johnny with more questions than he had when he came for answers.

“Why is he here?” He asks instead.

“Why are we all?” Mark wagers.

Johnny thinks about Hendery. “Why is he trapped in the mirror?”

It takes seven ball bounces for Mark to inhale sharply and answer.

“The equation was mixed up,” he murmurs, frowning. “He proved the wrong theory.”

Just as usual, it only serves to confuse Johnny more. He bites his lip and looks toward the room 1319.

“Taeil has the same mirror,” he recalls. “Right against Jaehyun’s one, only through a wall.”

Mark follows his gaze and chuckles warmly. “Taeil is paying his price.”

A distant echo of a memory stirs in Johnny’s mind.

“What did he buy?” He asks.

With a quiet sigh, Mark meets his eyes. He looks tired. Johnny reaches out and wraps his fingers around Mark’s wrist, tugging him close until Mark is nuzzled nicely between his legs, his head resting on Johnny’s shoulder. The rubber ball settles between their bodies.

“Something that cannot be purchased,” Mark whispers. “He used up all his ink.”

The lights in the corridor dim down gradually until they’re out, the grey light of the dawn taking their place on the walls. Slowly and steadily, it starts pulling itself back from reality. Johnny can already feel his memory fading.

“Until tomorrow,” Mark whispers against his lips, granting him with a kiss.

They have but a few minutes, so Johnny doesn’t waste his time. He deepens the kiss and holds Mark closer, somehow terrified to wake up tomorrow and find not one, but two people trapped in the mirror in room 1317.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	10. room 1315.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not really.” Mark pouts in thought. “In a friend group, everybody likes each other.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: found family.

The first time Johnny meets Mark, he’s walking down the corridor, too distracted staring into the cheat-sheet left to him along with his contract to notice a half-transparent man walking out of the room 1321. He almost crushes into him, but the man yelps and jumps away before Johnny can topple him to the ground.

Johnny looks up startled, a hasty apology all ready on his tongue, when he _sees_ him. Later, this will be the first memory that Johnny recalls about Mark as he wakes up after a day of oblivion and starts remembering the existence of the thirteenth floor and his own role in it. 

Mark looks _golden_. Under the mop of dark hair, Johnny sees wide, round, shiny eyes that seem to be staring into his very soul. They jump over Johnny’s face, surprised but somehow so all-knowing that it takes Johnny by surprise.

“Hello?” Mark tries when the silence stretches for too long. “I’m Mark.”

Johnny swallows around a jumble of possible responses, but none of them come, because something about Mark is familiar, so _painfully known_ , and he can’t determine it no matter how hard he stares into the pale face. Mark’s cheeks flush under the attention, and he rubs his neck with the edge of his sweater paw, a small frown making its way toward the crease between his eyebrows.

“I’m Johnny,” he finally manages to say, stilted and heavy. “The new night manager?”

Mark’s frowns deepens before his face clears like a night sky before the watchful gaze of the moon.

“Right!” He exclaims. “I was wondering when I would meet you.”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Right, so there I am.”

With an adorable nose scrunch, Mark giggles. He swipes at Johnny fondly.

“We’ll be friends,” he assures. “Let’s just skip the awkward stage, yeah?”

It settles over Johnny with the familiarity of a lover lost, and a gentle part of him that has been so lonely since he came to this Hotel _longs_ to reach out for Mark’s hands; yet instead, he just smiles and nods.

“Works for me,” Johnny says gently. “I’m, uhm, actually on my way to room 1315?”

He doesn’t know why he poses it as a question, but everything about Mark makes him curious, as if even the air around the man is charged with knowledge he’s not yet privy to — or, perhaps, the knowledge that he lost.

“Ah, yeah,” Mark looks behind Johnny and points to an old silver entrance a few doors down. “That’s kinda a shared space?”

“Really?” Johnny frowns and looks down on his cheat-sheet. “My info says someone named Doyoung occupies it?”

Mark giggles and swipes at him. “Yeah, technically, but Doie’s… He doesn’t really like to be alone, so we sort of… hang out there by turn? Or everybody at the same time.”

Johnny searches for words to keep the conversation going, but before he can do that and undoubtedly embarrass himself, Mark grabs his forearm and tugs him toward the room. His touch feels cold through Johnny’s standard-issue shirt, but he finds that he doesn’t mind it. Some part of him is surprised that Mark is touching him — but not because of the abruptness of the gesture but the fact that Mark looks like… a ghost. He flickers in and out of the air yet his form is solid, and Johnny’s too distracted trying to figure that out to register when they reach the room. Mark leads him inside, opening the unlocked door and submerging them both into the brightness of Christmas lights strew all around.

A man looks up from the couch when they enter, tall and lively. His face lights up with a lovely smile as he waves at them.

“Yukhei, you’re here!” Mark greets, bending over the couch and planting a kiss on his cheek. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, you know,” Yukhei snorts, gesturing to something out of Johnny’s view. “The usual.”

The entire living room is adorned in decorations clashing with each other in their origins. Aside from the Christmas lights serving as the only illumination of the space, Johnny spots birthday hats and stickers thrown around, wedding garments and centerpieces piled around the countless little chairs and a wide black piano in the corner, Halloween decorations hanging off of curtains and the mantlepiece. He dreads having to clean this up, but he can’t help but to admire the atmosphere of it all.

Two separate bedroom doors open on the sides of the room to reveal three more men. Two of them fall out of the room laughing and clutching each other before they notice Johnny.

“Oh, the new night manager!” A white-haired man yells. “Hi, I’m Yuta.”

Johnny nods to him politely and offers his hand, but Yuta disregards it and jumps Johnny in an embrace that he can’t help but return. His companion is more polite, simply shaking Johnny’s hand and introducing himself as the owner of the room — Doyoung.

“I apologize for the mess,” he says lightly. “But it has to stay like this. You don’t have to clean it.”

“Oh well,” Johnny chuckles. “Less work for me, as long as you don’t complain to the brass.”

“Hm.” Doyoung smiles cryptically. “And who would that be?”

The third man finally makes himself known by clearing his throat loudly right next to Johnny. He only reaches his shoulder, but the energy of his presence feels like he’s towering above them all.

“Ten,” he introduces himself with a cheeky smirk. “I think.”

“You think that’s your name?” Johnny jokes, offering his hand.

Ten glances at it and shakes his head lightly, rubbing his own hands, covered in fingerless gloves, before hiding them behind his back. It’s the first and only time Johnny will ever see Ten in these gloves, but it won’t be the last time he will wonder about this man’s nature and character.

“Who knows?” Ten responds. “The universe is vast. Somewhere, I don’t exist at all.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Johnny turns to the entrance, where another man is standing, not really entering yet not looking ready to leave. His hair is silver, but as the lights around them change their colors, so do the strands on the man’s head — going from black to white to green to blue to red in a matter of seconds before settling back into the snowy patterns. Ten swallows as he spots him, but then tugs on a lovely smile and bends his head toward Johnny before leaving to join Yukhei on the couch.

As if given permission, the man finally enters and offers Johnny a warm smile. There is a scar under his eyebrow that looks funny, but Johnny can’t put his finger on why that is so. In the days to come, there will be a lot of things that feel like this, both about this man and the Hotel overall.

“Taeyong,” he introduces himself. “And you’re Johnny, are you not?”

“Correct,” Johnny answers, compelled toward this strange sense of formality. 

“Funny,” Taeyong murmurs. “Interesting choice.”

He doesn’t stick around then, strolling toward the piano to gently lower himself on the stool and play with the keys absentmindedly. Mark appears by Johnny’s shoulder then with a shy smile.

“How are you liking it?” He whispers, and Johnny looks at his eyes again, and _again_ , fails to understand why it feels like they’ve known each other for more than one lifetime.

“It’s peculiar,” Johnny answers honestly.

“There’s more of us,” Mark supplies, casting a glance around the mismatched crowd. “But some are busy. Some can’t really appear at the same time. There are rules, you know?”

Johnny doesn’t, not really, _not yet,_ but he nods nevertheless.

“So what is it?” He asks. “A friend group?”

“Not really.” Mark pouts in thought. “In a friend group, everybody likes each other.”

Against his better judgement, Johnny looks toward Ten, who’s talking to Yukhei but whose gaze is glued to the man by the piano. A gentle melody that Johnny doesn’t recognize but feels deeply within his being resonates through the room.

“So what is it?” He asks quietly.

Mark sighs, a little escape of air that travels through his pretty lips, and Johnny finds himself hypnotized.

“It’s a family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	11. room 1319.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You only get one life,” Taeil says, “supposedly. Make the most of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: immortality.

The night when Johnny kisses Mark for the first time — or rather, Mark gets tired of waiting around for Johnny to fess up and asserts what he wants and when he wants it — starts horribly uneventfully. 

Johnny wakes up, spends ten hazy minutes recalling who he is and what he’s doing here, takes a hot shower, has breakfast — or dinner, or whatever it is called when it’s your first meal of the day but you have it as you watch the sun go down — gets dressed, and embarks on his path across the thirteenth floor to see if anybody needs help. He reckons that other hotel managers’ responsibilities are different, but he’s never checked; he just knows that he isn’t required to always aid everyone, he just needs to be where he is needed _when_ he is needed.

Which is rather hard to guess, but he always somehow ends up exactly where he must be. Like tonight, when he does he rounds and arrives to room 1328 just as Taeyong needs to refresh the water for his flowers — the eternal vase of camomiles on his bedside table; or when he feels compelled to visit Jungwoo in room 1332 and finds that the man has run out of ink literally a minute before and needed some fresh quills. Johnny runs around like this through the night, doing his little tasks, content and rather happy in his routine — because routine means he _knows_ it all now, knows their habits and little quirks, knows who needs what and why they do. Alright, perhaps, not _why_ , but it’s not really his job to know — it’s his job to have it prepared.

When three in the morning rolls around, he finds himself free and craving something very particular — crepes. He doesn’t know where it came from or how to resolve it, since he doesn’t feel accomplished enough to take a lunch break, but it persists, chasing after him as he goes down to the basement to recycle the trash and comes back to the floor to see if anybody else needs anything.

Mark jumps out of his room just as Johnny passes it with a fleeting _longing_ fluttering in his chest, a huge smile wide on his face as if seeing Johnny is the best thing to ever happen to him.

“Good night,” he greets him gleefully. “I have something to show you.”

Without giving Johnny time to recuperate — which seems to be one of his many, _many_ delightful traits — Mark grabs his forearm and drags him down the corridor, toward the room 1319, but Johnny stops in his tracks and touches Mark’s shoulder before he can undoubtedly jump inside.

“Isn’t that…” He swallows, eyeing the indigo door. “...Taeil’s room?”

Mark frowns and looks at the number before glancing back at Johnny. “Yeah? And what?”

Johnny jerks his shoulder. “I dunno. He never needs anything. It’s unsettling.”

“Well, Hendery never needs anything either, but you seem to be friendly with him,” Mark notes with a peculiar sniff.

“Yeah, well, Hendery is _nice_ ,” Johnny points out urgently. “He’s never tried to claw my eyes out again after that one time.”

Mark giggles giddily before shaking his head. “Taeil’s good.”

As usual, he doesn’t care what Johnny thinks — an infuriating but endearing quality. He bursts into the room and squeals in delight when the first thing he sees is a pool right inside the room, dug deep into the floor. Johnny wonders at the logistics of it, because he knows the layout and that thing _must_ go down as deep as the tenth floor, but something tells him nobody under this room suspects of the pool’s existence. It’s just the funny way the Hotel works.

Taeil himself emerges from the bathroom a second later, fluffy pajamas hugging his body and hair dripping wet. He spots Mark and cringes.

“Not _you_ again,” he whines. “What are you doing here?”

“Pool party!” Mark announces unashamed and starts stripping down. “I’ve already invited the others.”

“Ah! Mark Lee, you little rascal!” Taeil yells, running toward them, but it’s too late — Mark is already inside the pool, splashing around and swimming toward the sound system in the corner. “Get out of my pool, or so help me gods—”

Mark turns around quickly and _pouts_ , aiming all its strength and power at Taeil’s pissed face. Johnny doesn’t envy him, because he’s been on the receiving end of that quite a few times, and it’s _scary effective_. Just like expected, Taeil crumbles quickly and sighs morbidly.

“ _Fine_ ,” he decrees. “But you’ll do the cleaning up.”

With a devilish grin, Mark winks at Johnny.

“You’re a menace,” Johnny whispers, because both of them know exactly who will be cleaning up.

Mark blows him a kiss, which, granted, makes Johnny lose his focus a little, which is enough time for the door to bust open again and a mismatched crowd to fall in, shouting greetings and carrying all sorts of things inside. Taeil watches them sadly but doesn’t make any moves to stop them, and when the dust settles and all of them are scattered in the pool or on the chairs around it, Johnny thinks he sees a warm glint in the strange man’s eyes.

After that, it’s a haze of a party thrown by immortals. Johnny doesn’t get into the water himself, a little comprehensive and squeamish. Mark flags him down repeatedly, but to Johnny’s luck, he is easily distracted by his many friends, so Johnny eventually sinks further and further into the room until he finds a quiet corner to just observe and sip on his apple juice.

“Mark likes you,” Taeil informs him, appearing by his side out of the dark. “Do something about it.”

Johnny almost chokes on his juice, _almost_ , and looks up at the man propping the wall in an even darker corner. His eyes shine with what seems like stark blue in the night, and they run over Johnny’s body as if he is judging his sins and perils.

“What do you mean?” Johnny asks lamely.

Taeil sighs and rolls his eyes, an action with something so _royal_ and _elegant_ about it that it seems to be a thing from another dimension — a peculiar and oxymoron thing to assume in this kind of place.

“You only get one life,” Taeil says, “supposedly. Make the most of it.”

His gaze travels toward the other end of the room — a corner behind the piano that is hauntingly empty in a crowded space. With a chill down his spine, Johnny realizes that there is a mirror hung on the wall, and it takes him perhaps a second to recall what is placed on the opposite side of it — what resides in the room 1317.

Johnny thinks about his first time meeting Hendery suddenly, and the haunting curse growled with an angered tongue.

_We’re trapped here with our own mistakes._

“What has led you here?” Johnny asks under his breath, half-hoping Taeil doesn’t hear it and ignores him.

With a soft and pained sigh, Taeil materializes by his shoulder and looks him up and down, and a sparkle of animosity in his eyes grows until it’s an ocean that spills over in a foamy wave — and then it dissolves; and it is nothing but a face of a tired immortal man floating in the darkness before him like a Cheshire cat.

“I used to collect a lot of debts,” Taeil murmurs. “Now, I’m here to pay _my_ price. Luckily for the universe and horribly for me, I’m going to live here for a long time.”

“Are you immortal, too?” Johnny finds himself asking, unable to look away from Taeil’s expressionless face.

Loud music blares around them and thumps against his temples, but Taeil’s voice is clear like diamonds cutting through glass.

“Nobody here is immortal per say, Johnny,” he whispers. “We only live as long as someone tells our story.”

Shivers chase down Johnny’s arms at the doomed fatality of the words, of the tone, of Taeil’s pale lips speaking them into existence. 

“Is that why Jungwoo writes all the time?” Johnny asks, reverent. “Is he telling our stories?”

“No.” Taeil smiles. “ _Limitless_ does.”

He turns away then, discarding his glass and stretching his neck. Johnny thinks he sees blue veins running up and down his arms as he reaches upwards, but then the sleeves of his robe ride back down.

“Go to Mark,” Taeil advises without looking at him. “There’s only so much ink that can be spent on you.”

Taeil disappears in the crowd as soundlessly as he appeared, and it takes Johnny a few minutes to untangle the mess of his thoughts. They scatter and chase each other around his headspace, yet he doesn’t get to catch any of them — a wet hand wraps around his calf and tugs. He looks down to find a wet and giddy Mark staring up at him with stars in his eyes and joy in his smile.

“Come here,” he mouths through the music.

Reluctance of the previous hour leaves Johnny’s body in waves alike to those that ripple when he crouches down and slips into the pool, snaking his arms around Mark’s waist. Mark looks at him like he’s everything that ever mattered, and the music and lights and laughter and voices around them die out — and only Mark remains, his lips blue from the reflecting light and trembling but not from cold. From something else.

“What did you two talk about?” Mark asks, his cold fingers fumbling with Johnny’s collar, now soaked and heavy.

“Nothing and everything,” Johnny murmurs. Mark is close to him. Then again, Mark has always felt just an inch away. “Storytelling.”

“Ah.” Mark chuckles and nods, and leans in — and his nose is warm against Johnny’s cheek, and it’s different and new but achingly familiar. “Kiss me, Johnny.”

Johnny holds him tighter, and looks into his eyes, so wide and shiny and painfully real, and he wonders at how much ink he has already wasted — and how much he yet has in store. 

Mark’s lips taste like chlorine and cranberry, and the inks yet to be spilled along the pages of their existence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


	12. room 1328.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do camomiles mean?” Taeyong asks.
> 
> It’s quiet for enough time for another flower to die, finally.
> 
> “May all your wishes and dreams be fulfilled,” Ten replies then. “I think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> square: eternal youth.

Taeyong never cared much for flowers. His affections lied with other trivial things the world could provide him with — shapes, mostly, of all kinds and origins. Circles of water on wood, triangles of moles on his lover’s back, rombic parallels of honeycombs he would find on his walks, tears of aloe vera he used to grow on his living room window, snowflakes that never quite melted against the cold skin of—

(Taeyong once asked Chai if the line was a shape. What followed was an intricate lecture on relativity of perception, when a simple yes or no would have sufficed. Taeyong didn't stop him, even if he didn’t really get a clear answer by the end. Taeyong loved listening to him. Taeyong loved him.)

He wakes up.

The camomiles on his bedside, the ones that are always there — have always been there even after countless attempts to throw them out, drown them, burn them, scatter them, gift them — look as fresh as ever, even if the water is mouldy and rotten. The roots of the flowers are nothing but a putrid, decayed mess, yet the petals persevere. A meretricious parody on an ebullient non-reality.

His body aches.

There is somebody at the door.

They do not knock, nor do they call out to see if he’s inside. They know.

Taeyong contemplates opening the door and facing him, just to see what he does. It would certainly obviate the need to pretend like everything is as it should be. A meager action of opening the door would be enough. It is funny to fantasize about it, but he knows he’ll never act upon it.

He will never open the door, the man on the other side will never knock. He can’t, and not because of some haughty reservations or laughable shyness — because he _can’t_.

Taeyong wants him to, desperately prays every waking moment that he would make that one step. His skin burns with his absence yet there is not enough pain in the world to make him forget that it wouldn’t be right — just a fleeting reprieve from a torturous existence.

This door is not the one he should be knocking on — or standing next to. Taeyong gets up to inform him of that but then stops in the middle of the room, chastising himself for such a weakness, however benevolent. He hears movement behind the door and swallows thickly, worrying his sleeves and wondering if it ever gets easier.

He presses his hand to the wood and leans his forehead over the place he knows his room number is on through the thick palette of blue pine. His lips tingle with phantom warmth and distant electricity.

“You can’t keep hiding here forever,” he whispers.

He is still heard.

It shouldn’t be possible out there in the real world, but here — Taeyong feels Ten leaning on the other side of the door as if they were touching. They can’t, of course. Even now, Taeyong’s skin heats up in anticipation of going ablaze at the mere sight of the other man — which shouldn’t work ridiculously like that but still does.

“I don’t know how to go back.”

Taeyong closes his eyes, tears wetting them. 

“I can’t help you,” he whispers. “Stop asking me to, please.”

A scrape of clothes on wood tells him Ten sat down with his back to the door, and Taeyong mirrors the gesture, falling down and hugging his knees. It doesn’t feel like they’re not in the same room — the door is nothing but an emaciated veil between the worlds and their bodies.

“Who else am I supposed to ask?” Ten wonders breathlessly. “ _Johnny_?”

Taeyong huffs out a laugh. That one is rich.

“Mark would be your safest bet,” he advises, even though he’s not supposed to.

But it’s the least he could do, he thinks. He owes it to the fairy he sees sometimes when his door isn’t fully closed. He owes it to the man suspended in another world. He owes it to himself to try. 

Because nobody ever specified the rules, that’s the thing. They were thrown in here like rag dolls and told to behave, sit tight until they start figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it, and that was all. That was all! Not a note or anything, nothing too solid, no set-in-stone lines of ink defining what constitutes following the game.

They’re supposed to figure it out but who said they couldn’t help each other with it? Nobody tried it out of fear and the multitude of grudges on each other, but if someone can start a trend, it’s Taeyong. It all circles back to him anyway, so why not? 

“You think?” Ten whispers, unsure and vulnerable.

“Yeah.” Taeyong sighs. “I’m not sure but who is? You have to start somewhere.”

“There’s a fucking tree in my room, dude,” Ten laughs out, suddenly all life and energy now that Taeyong is actually talking to him. “I wake up every day with someone else in my head, and on the days when I’m _me_ , it takes me hours to start figuring out what to do, and then it’s all gone and I pass out again, and the next time I wake up—”

“That’s the point,” Taeyong interrupts, turning his head to the left. If he keeps his eyes closed, he can pretend Ten is close. Closer than half a reality away. “You’re not supposed to have awareness like that. You’re supposed to be a placeholder.”

Ten stays silent for a long while, and Taeyong listens for every whisper of the breath, every little sound, until he hears a tired exhale.

“Why am I not, then?”

Taeyong drums his fingers on the floor and recalls a man a lot like himself with the heart of gold and a soul of a martyr, laid out by the roots of a big tree, arms outstretched in a silent plea and eyes golden like the sun.

“Because he was selfish for once,” Taeyong supplies. “For a good reason, too, and I would’ve done the same—” oh the irony of that one, “—but there had to be consequences. A malediction of sorts, if you will, for the same mistake made by two men.”

His heart aches with a pull that brings his chin between his knees, a longing of infinite magnitudes that he hasn’t felt in some time. He turns his head with a strain to look at the camomiles and sees one of them wilt away with a soundless waltz of the petals to the floor.

“How long have we been here?” Ten asks suddenly.

“Forever,” Taeyong replies, “and a little more. We’re eternally young, my love.”

“I’m not yours, though.”

“No.” He lets the tear fall and dissipate in the air. “You are not. And I am not yours. Which is why you should talk to Mark.”

“Alright.”

Ten sounds lost and hurt, and Taeyong reckons he ought to be, perhaps even more than that. Both of them, really, but Taeyong has been awfully maudlin as of late instead of remorseful and bereaved, and he supposes it’s time he pays for that.

“Hey, Ten?” He calls out.

“Yes?” Comes immediately. 

“What do camomiles mean?” Taeyong asks.

It’s quiet for enough time for another flower to die, finally.

“May all your wishes and dreams be fulfilled,” Ten replies then. “I think.”

It’s reminders like these that let Taeyong know that it’s not Chai. He nods to himself and wipes at his blotchy face, wishing and dreaming for his love to cut his journey short. 

Halloween is soon, he recalls. It’s his only hope to break out of his immutable, lonely, impossible existence. 

Ten leaves quietly, and Taeyong stays still until he hears the black door to room 1323 close with the tell-tale soughing of charred wood on the floor. Then, he stands up and stretches his weak knees before opening his own door and staring into the corridor. It’s quiet and still here. The night has only started, and Johnny is going to come soon — to change the water in his vase, to let the camomiles pretend they’re alive again, to continue with their serene, eternal life.

His blue door is innocent and simple. It has been like this for centuries, and it would stay like that even if Taeyong hadn’t walked through it once. Everything that came after was a lesson learned from that one action, but what would it matter in the grand scheme of things if—

If the line wasn’t a shape? 

He doesn’t see this Ten anymore after that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld)

**Author's Note:**

> not beta-ed because i'm afraid to send june anything that isn't ets.
> 
> the vibes inspired by the 1975’s entire discography looped during writing 
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/misfiten) // [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/limitlessworld) // [carrd](https://onefortheroad.carrd.co/)


End file.
